Innocents and Others by Dana Spiotta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
An intriguing portrait of two friends—Meadow Mori and Carrie Wexler—who come of age in the 80s in L.A. and both become filmmakers. Meadow’s art tilts toward the experimental while Carrie’s leans commercial, adding tension to their friendship over the years. And intermingled with their stories is the story of a third woman—Amy/Nicole/Jelly—who is an artist of a different sort, an auditory artist.
Innocents and Others is constructed from autobiographical essays and short chapters, with each character presenting a public face that hews close to the truth—or perhaps the cinematic truth—of their lives. At a moment when we’re focusing more attention on women filmmakers, this book seems remarkably prescient in telling the story of two ambitious filmmakers who pursue very different projects. I just wish the story had dug a little deeper into their motivations or past histories. With both Meadow and Carrie I felt like I wasn’t getting far past their own projected images to learn something true about each of them. Which might be exactly the point.